20) Chris Dodd: Dodd, who ran a perfectly awful campaign for President, was one of the few candidates who didn’t get an invitation to join Barack Obama’s cabinet. Was it because he’s so tragically boring? No, it’s because not only was he, like Barney Frank, an enabler for the whole financial crisis that has currently engulfed the U.S. economy — he also got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide and then turned around and helped funnel billions of dollars their way during the bailout. Of course, Dodd claimed that he had no idea he was getting such a great deal because he is a U.S. Senator. He simply thought they were rewarding him for being such a good customer!

That’s how it always seems to work with crooked politicians like Chris Dodd: companies funnel in money on the front end and the pols pay them back with taxpayer money by the bank vault full while shifting the blame elsewhere.

Defining quote: “It’s not easy being a U.S. senator. People trick you into taking special favors you didn’t even know existed. Shame on these unscrupulous people!

…Most alleged victims of Countrywide were gulled into taking loans with onerous interest rates and excessive fees. But they don’t know the agony of life as a U.S. senator, when at any moment a powerful, well-heeled interest might take advantage of you with cut-rate loans.” — Rich Lowry

19) Hillary Clinton: Many Americans developed a strange new respect for the wicked witch of New York after she clawed, scratched, and ripped her way to the very end of her little catfight with Barack Obama.

However, her campaign was one of the more grotesque spectacles of the modern presidential era. Hillary Clinton couldn’t have gotten elected as dog catcher of Pumpkinsquat, Arkansas had she not been married to Bill Clinton — yet she ran as a self-styled feminist icon who demanded that other women vote for her solely because she is a woman. Marry that to the subtle racism that the campaign used when it thought it was to her advantage, her attitude of entitlement, and ridiculous lies she spouted at every opportunity and Hillary richly deserves to be on this list.

Defining quote: “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” — Hillary Clinton makes up a ridiculous, untrue story about her trip to Bosnia.

Defining quote #2: “The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bulls***. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with.” — Spike Lee

18) The View: If you’ve never seen The View before, picture your water cooler at work. You walk up to it and for a moment, you think you’re about to have a great conversation because Elisabeth Hasselbeck is standing there. Then, you realize that everybody else around the water cooler is a gossipy left-wing yenta whose mouth moves faster than her brain. At that point, you just say “screw it” and go buy a soda from the machine. That was a smart decision because you missed something so dumb that just hearing it might have lowered your IQ a few points — like this,

Defining quote: “Should I be worried about being a slave, about being returned to slavery because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change?” — Whoopi Goldberg to John McCain

17) Joe Biden: After selecting Joe Biden as his Vice-President, Barack Obama was soon shocked to learn the man who had once referred to him as the “first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” turned out to be gaffe prone.

In fact, it got so bad that for the last few weeks of the campaign, Obama had to hide Joe Biden in Dick Cheney’s old bunkers. Although there’s no shortage of Biden bloopers to choose from during the campaign, my personal favorite is when Obama’s “foreign policy expert” talked about some sort of alternate universe where the U.S. and France (!) got together and ran Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.'”

That was during the vice-presidential debate, where Biden delivered another of my favorite lines,

“Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time…”

Biden spends a lot of time in Home Depot? And Katie’s Restaurant? It closed more than 15 years before the VP debate.

Still, if you want a defining quote for Biden that shows what a disaster he was as a VP selection, you can’t do much better than this one,

Defining quote: “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

16) Cynthia McKinney: The woman from Planet Moonbat started the year running for President on the Green Party ticket and pulled almost 160k votes — which admittedly, is pretty good for a lunatic.

She capped the year off by boarding a boat that tried — and failed — to run an Israeli blockade to take supplies to the Palestinians.

In between, she unleashed the bizarro-world defining excerpt that insured that she would make this list,

Defining excerpt: “In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I had a woman, I’ve never really said this in public, out loud, in front of a lot of cameras, and there’s a lot of cameras in this room now. I had a mother to call me because her son had a very gruesome task. Her son’s charge by the Department of Defense was to process 5000 bodies that had received a single bullet wound to the head — and these were mostly males. And her son was afraid to talk because he signed a silence agreement. So, he only complained to his mother. But, the date about these individuals was entered into a Pentagon computer and then reportedly, the bodies were dumped in a swamp in Louisiana. This is as a result of the tragedy of hurricane Katrina.

Now I have no…no…I have verification from insiders who wish to remain anonymous, at the Red Cross, that this is true. I suspect that these were prisoners. And so, you know, this investigation of the whole prison industrial complex is extremely important. And it should not end with just a question of the nature of prisons in our country, but these five thousand souls also need some justice too.” — Cynthia McKinney

15) Eliot Spitzer: Politicians having affairs are nothing new, but in Spitzer’s case, it involved a Jim Bakkeresque level of hypocrisy. Here was a guy who made a name for himself in New York by playing hardball with white-collar criminals. In fact, he once even “broke up a call-girl ring and locked up 18 people on corruption, money-laundering and prostitution charges.”

Then, once he became governor and came to believe he was above the law, Spitzer started doing the exact same thing he once put people in jail for. Although he deserves a smidgen of credit for actually resigning in shame instead of trying to stick it out, he did drag his wife out for the humiliating “She forgives me, so why can’t you?” press conference.

Defining picture #1: Was hitting this…

Defining picture #2: Really worth the dishonor, his career, and doing this to the mother of his children?

14) Charles Rangel: Do you know what irony is? It’s Charles Rangel, the head of the Ways and Means Committee, who’s responsible for writing tax code, being caught cheating on his taxes.

Incidentally, that scandal is in addition to his shady involvement with AIG. Rangel was“trying to raise money from AIG, the troubled insurance giant, money to finance a government school at CCNY in his name, at a time when the company has business before his committee.”

Then there’s the allegation that Rangel“protected an oil drilling company from a big tax bill when the head of that company pledged a $1 million donation to a college center named after the congressman.”

Between 2004 and 2007, Rep. Charles Rangel steered nearly $80,000 in campaign cash to an Internet company run by his son – paying lavishly for a pair of political Web sites so poorly designed an expert estimated one should have cost no more than $100 to create.

Again, this isn’t some random Congressman; this is the Chairman of the most powerful committee in Congress and he’s not even being asked to step down while the ethics committee whitewashes the whole scandal. It’s bad enough that the Democratic Congress has gotten so crooked, so fast, but it’s really bad form to make so little effort to hide it.

Defining quote: “The serious and increasingly numerous charges surrounding Chairman Rangel threaten to compromise the ability of his committee to provide the oversight and direction our country desperately needs and our constituents rightfully deserve. Democrats convened this Congress with a pledge to ‘lead the most ethical Congress in history.’ If there was ever a time and occasion to make good on that pledge, it would be now.” — Roy Blount

13) Roseanne Barr: Know what I like about Roseanne Barr? Not only is she a celebrity and an ultra-left-wing extremist, she’s crazy-as-a-loon, barking-at-the-moon, stone-cold-drunk-at-high-noon, can’t-get-some-Prozac-too-soon crazy.

How could Barr not make the list when practically any day of the week you can go over to her blog and find quotes like this one,

Defining quote: “It makes no sense to me that people who have visions must hide for fear of being branded crazed or a witch. I knew from a very early age that I was crazed and a witch by patriarchal definition. I knew too however, because I was shown it by a being from another dimension who appeared to me and said: ‘You will talk about the (female) Shekkinah and her temple priestess and be a witness for he/she/ it. You are the only one in your world who is not crazy, and you will always need to reverse what is being said and then reverse it double. Here is the code you will use to stay sane in an insane world: You will see signs that tell you that you are right. If you do not see the sign immediately, then it is not a sign. Signs happen immediately and not outside the NOW. The sign that you are right will be: everyone thinks YOU are crazy.'”– Roseanne Barr

12) Rod Blagojevich: In the post-Clinton “character doesn’t count” days of American politics, it’s hard to be shocked by anything crooked a politician does — including selling a Senate seat. But, even crooks like William Jefferson, Charles Rangel, and Chris Dodd probably wouldn’t be rotten enough to shake down a children’s hospital for a $50,000 campaign contribution. Blago, 1 — other crooked politicians, 0. His other shenanigans, including appointing a tainted nominee to replace Barack Obama, are just cake compared to that.

Defining excerpt: “(Roland) Burris said Blagojevich is innocent until proved guilty, even though his behavior ‘is reprehensible.'”

…He also appeared to support Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s efforts to remove Blagojevich from office.

‘I certainly applaud her actions,’ he said of Madigan in a December 13 news conference, according to WBBM. ‘Illinois is too important to its 18 million citizens to have a chief executive who is now incapacitated.'” — Roland Burris, the man Blagojevich chose to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, tosses him under the bus one day after his appointment

11) Al Franken: Franken was so snide, combative, and downright “un-senatorial” that even the state’s most famous ultra-liberal paper, the Minnesota Star Tribune, endorsed his opponent, Senator Norm Coleman.

Franken lost the election, then with the help of Democratic officials, began a hamhanded attempt to steal the Senate seat that would be over-the-top even for Hugo Chavez. The rules written before the election were thrown out, mysterious votes have appeared out of nowhere, duplicate ballots for Franken have been counted, and at times they’ve chosen to ignore the results of the hand count and go with numbers from election night in districts where it will help Franken.

Defining quote: “Republicans are asleep at the wheel while another close election is being openly stolen by the man whose contributions to western civilization include the ‘Planet of The Enormous Hooters’ sketch on SNL.” — Ann Coulter

10) Bill Maher: People like acidic atheist Bill Maher are what’s wrong with politics today. He’s shallow as a kiddie pool, intolerably rude, and insufferably smug. But, because he’s outrageous, has a knack for delivering an insult, and is good at playing to the crowd, he can make a living as a professional @sshole talking head.

Maher is a perfect example of how a human being can be intelligent and eloquent enough to make a living talking about the issues even when he’s wrong about almost everything that matters.

9) Barney Frank: Frank is a prissy, snide, obnoxious creep who has been neck deep in the mortgage crisis that tanked the economy. Frank pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make bad loans while blocking attempts at reform, perhaps in part because his live-in boyfriend was an executive at Fannie Mae. This is after another one of Frank’s boyfriends ran a prostitution ring out of his living room. Given his track record, either Barney Frank should stop dating or quit Congress, whichever he prefers.

But, the real kicker is that Barney Frank, one of the people most responsible for the mortgage crisis, is also one of the people who has been put in charge of fixing it and of course, he has been blaming anybody and everybody but himself for the financial disaster he helped inflict upon the country.

“Last week in this space, I made a jocular reference to a global economy ‘so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens.’ I tittered too soon. It turns out the entire planetary meltdown is due to Congressman Frank’s sex life.” — Mark Steyn

by Sir John Hawkins

John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.

8) Chris Matthews: “Tweety” has always been annoying, but his subservient, almost worshipful attitude towards Barack Obama was so unbelievable that it was almost like he was doing some kind of year long performance piece. For a whole year, Matthews talked about Obama like he was a combination of Abe Lincoln and Jesus, gasped sycophantically in delight at Bambi’s every utterance, and dutifully spun for the campaign like he was a paid member of the staff.

Defining quote: “I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg.” — Chris Matthews

Defining conversation: CHRIS MATTHEWS: “Yeah, well, you know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work, and I think that –”

JOE SCARBOROUGH: “Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist!”

MATTHEWS: “Yeah, it is my job. My job is to help this country.”

7) John Murtha: At some point, you almost wonder whether you should put guys like John Murtha on this list or the constituents who keep sending them back up to Congress, no matter what they say and do.

In Murtha’s case, not only is he nasty tempered, incompetent, and corrupt, he was sued by one of the former Marines he unjustly smeared as a murderer,

A former Marine sued Rep. John Murtha for slander on Thursday, saying the congressman damaged his reputation by saying he and his comrades killed women and children “in cold blood” in Haditha, Iraq, in November 2005.

…”(Lance Cpl. Justin) Sharratt, in being labeled repeatedly by Murtha as a ‘cold-blooded murderer,’ and by Murtha outrageously claiming that the Haditha incident was comparable to the infamous (My Lai) massacre of Vietnam, has suffered permanent, irreversible damage to his reputation,” the lawsuit states.

Sharratt, 24, of the Pittsburgh suburb of Canonsburg, was initially charged with three counts of premeditated murder but was exonerated after a full investigation and a hearing. He was honorably discharged last year.

To top it all off, John Murtha insulted his own constituents — more than once — and was still easily reelected over a well funded, competent challenger despite defining quotes like these,

Defining quote #2: “There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area. The older population is more hesitant.” — John Murtha

6) Barack Obama: This is the best way to sum up Barack Obama’s campaign, why his supporters voted for him, and how the media covered him.

Ahem…

Who can take a rainbow,
Wrap it in a sigh?
Soak it in the sun and make the stra’bry lemon pie
The candyman? The candyman can
The candyman can ’cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

The Candyman makes
everything he bakes
Satisfying and delicious.
Talk about your childhood wishes.
You can even eat the dishes!

Who can take tomorrow,
Dip it in a dream?
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream,
The candyman? The Candyman can, the candyman can
The candyman can ’cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good
And the world tastes good
’cause the candyman thinks it should

5) Nancy Pelosi: What a year it was for the first female speaker! Under her leadership, the deficit exploded, corruption in Congress increased, the political atmosphere became even more poisonous, and the economy fell apart while she did nothing — well, to say she did nothing is unfair.

“And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.”

Of course, what else could you expect from General Pelosi, a military genius who said,

Defining quote: “…twice…that Iraq ‘is a failure,’ adding that President Bush’s troop surge has ‘not produced the desired effect.'”

4) Al Gore: The more thoroughly global warming is discredited, the more desperately the Chicken Littles, led by Al Gore, shriek that we must make draconian changes right now, before it’s too late!

Of course, being the leading proponent of a silly global hoax may make you look like a jackass when the history books are written, but Al Gore will be able to console himself with his Nobel Peace Prize and the big stacks of cash he makes by fleecing suckers who’re falling for the whole scam. The one thing Gore proves is that no matter what the scientific evidence may be, if you keep screaming “IT’S SCIENCE” in the name of a politically correct cause long enough, people will beat a path to your door to hand you money and awards, no matter how scant your proof may be.

Defining quote #1: “New evidence shows ‘the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us. This is a planetary emergency. There has never been anything remotely like it in the entire history of human civilization. We are putting at risk all of human civilization.'” — Al Gore

Defining quote #2: “If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.” — Al Gore

Defining quote #3: In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

…In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.” — Tennessee Center for Policy Research

3) John Edwards: Whatever you think of Elizabeth Edwards, she has been remarkably dedicated to her husband. After being diagnosed with incurable breast cancer that went right down to the bone, most women would have gone home to rest, spent time with their children, and focused on staying healthy as possible — but, not Elizabeth Edwards. She did campaign appearances, interviews, and even allowed well wishers who sent her emails to be added to her husband’s fund raising list.

How did John Edwards repay his wife’s loyalty? By carrying on a long running affair with Rielle Hunter, whom Edwards brought on to the campaign and paid a hefty fee to make a few videos. The web of lies surrounding the whole affair was never fully penetrated, but the preponderance of the evidence seems to suggest that Hunter had Edwards’ love child and that he arranged for her to be paid off handsomely to stay quiet.

Cheating on your wife is sleazy. But, cheating on your cancer stricken wife who was working for you on the campaign trail even though she undoubtedly didn’t feel like it? You have to be a legendary sleazebag to do something like that.

Defining quote: “Edwards made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter.” — John Edwards to ABC

Defining quote #2: “But a source told the NATIONAL ENQUIRER: ‘Now that it seems to have blown wide open, Rielle may get her wish – all she wants is for John to marry her and for them to live happily ever after with their baby. She’s tired of running and living a lie.'” — The National Enquirer touches on what is probably Elizabeth Edwards’ biggest nightmare — after her death, having Rielle Hunter become the new mother of her children.

2) Harry Reid: When the Senate Majority leader wasn’t bizarrely declaring that we had to grind our economy to a halt by refusing to continue to use fossil fuels…

” That is, coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, its Global Warming, its ruining our Country, its ruining our World. We have got to stop using fossil fuel.” — Harry Reid

MetLife Inc., Hartford Financial Services Group and Prudential Financial Inc. all fell by double-digit percentage amounts [yesterday] after Reid on Wednesday said the financial-system bailout plan was crucial because a large insurer was at risk of failing.

…A statement from his office said that Reid was “not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy” and that “he has no special knowledge about nor has he talked to any insurance company officials,” Dow Jones reported.

…Little Lord Harry was declaring that he was offended by the very stench of his constituents.

Defining quote: “My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.” — Harry Reid

1) Andrew Sullivan: Excitable Andy over at The Atlantic may be the single most intellectually incoherent writer on the entire internet — and that includes the nuts who think that lizard people are cooperating with the NWO to subjugate human kind.

To read Andrew Sullivan’s blog is to walk in the world of Alice in Wonderland, where every word means what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less. He claims to be a Christian, but hates, fears, and savagely disparages people with mainstream Christian beliefs. Sully claims to be conservative, but he constantly attacks mainstream conservatives and incessantly promotes liberals who despise everything conservatives stand for. Having Sully claim to be representative of conservative Christians is like having James Dobson claim to be a representative of liberal atheists.

However, while that would be enough to rocket Sully up the list, the thing that put him over-the-top this year was his insane promotion of the Trig Palin conspiracy. You see, according to Andrew Sullivan, Bristol Palin actually had Trig. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin, while she was governor, faked a pregnancy for some murky reason or another.

Sullivan has been the chief promoter on the internet of that wacko conspiracy theory for months, with zero evidence, even though there have been multiple pictures of Sarah Palin pregnant with Trig floating around out there. Eventually, one of Sullivan’s own guest bloggers punked Sully out on his own blog by saying that he had seen the same evidence Sully had and that obviously the story wasn’t true.

Defining Excerpt: “I am the only other person who has read all the obstetrician interviews, the interview with a reporter at the scene, and all the primary sources. I strongly believe that there is nothing to this story.

…Forget about grainy inconclusive photographs: reporters saw Palin pregnant. This was one of the primary reasons Alaskan papers stopped investigating the story. Additionally, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Bristol Palin was pregnant during this time. The Dish interviewed Lori Tipton, an Alaskan TV reporter at the hospital the day of the delivery. Here’s part of that interview:

“Sarah [Palin] was in another room, and they said that she was sleeping when we arrived. And so, we got a little bit of footage of Sally [Heath] holding Trig, and Chuck [Heath] standing next to her. And Bristol [Palin] was in there, and I said to Bristol, ‘We should get some footage of you and your brother and your grandparents.’ And she’s like, ‘No I really don’t like to be photographed.’ And I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, no.’ And she didn’t have any make-up on or anything, but she was dressed in typical teenage attire, a tight shirt, low-cut jeans, you know, and we had heard the rumors before the delivery of this baby also, that Bristol was pregnant, and so, when my photographer and I got to the hospital and we saw her, I thought, well, clearly there’s no way that girl just delivered a baby seven hours ago.”

“The easiest way to disprove these conspiracy theories is to consider what would be required for them to be true. Palin’s doctor, along with a good number of Mat-Su Regional’s doctors, nurses, and administrators would need to be in on the cover-up. On multiple occasions Palin would have had to pad her belly to make herself look pregnant. She would have needed to get friends to lie about seeing her breast feed. She would have had to silence an entire community – including two 17-year-olds and their friends – while the national media and the National Enquirer snooped around. Implausible to say the least.” — Patrick Appel